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Authors: Alison Loat
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reserve, then trusted them to distribute his message to everyone else. One typical visit happened at Cumberland House in northeastern Saskatchewan, where Merasty sat down with Chief Lorne Stewart and his tribal council.
“You try and convince them that the role of an MP and MLA is important and it helps shape the future and their participation in the future,” he said. At community gatherings in school gyms, Merasty took questions from the audience. “Why should we worry about voting,” one man asked, “when we don’t have jobs?” Another said, “Who cares about voting—get us some more housing. Our houses are too crowded.” The gist of what Merasty heard was that voting is a waste of time.
“I agree—government has not been helpful,” Merasty responded. “You see the evidence of that when you see twenty people living in a three-bedroom house. And when the educational spending on a First Nations child is one-third less thanwhat it is elsewhere in the province.” But if the First Nations turned out to vote, Merasty said, they could elect one of their own to represent them. And if Merasty made it to Ottawa, then he’d work inside the system to try to fix those problems. “I don’t dispute the problems you’re mentioning,” Merasty said at Cumberland House. “But the power of your vote is loud.”
In reserve community centres, in school gyms, huddled into tiny kitchens, Merasty repeated his message. What he remembers most about that period is the darkness. It would start to get dark around four in the afternoon, and once he finished delivering his message it was back into the 4Runner for another long drive through the dark and the cold to the next reservation town, where he’d do it all again. He campaigned in places where no one had ever campaigned before—places the other candidates thought too small, places everyone else dismissed because the Indians didn’t vote anyway. During the eight-week campaign he and his wife and campaign manager put 30,000 kilometres on their SUV.
That last week Merasty reminded his supporters: Get out. Vote. Bring government-issued photo ID, and if you don’t have that, then bring three pieces of mail. The week before the election, it was minus 38 degrees Celsius, but luckily election day was positively balmy—the mercury actually topped zero. That evening, when the polls closed, Merasty was in Creighton, just down the road from Flin Flon, watching the television at RJ’s Motel. The numbers were close. Merasty led, he trailed, he led, and when the tally finally came in, he had won by 10,225 to 10,119, a margin of just 106 votes. The Conservative incumbent, Jeremy Harrison, challenged the result, alleging, among other things, that the Ahtahkakoop First Nation hadstaged a raffle for a television on election night, in a gambit designed to get out the vote. Another alleged irregularity involved a box of ballots that had somehow ended up being used as insulation for the grill of a pick-up truck. After a judge-ordered recount, Merasty held on to his victory, albeit with the margin narrowed to sixty-seven votes.
According to Merasty, the First Nations vote went up by 25 percent over previous elections. Merasty was the first full-status aboriginal person from the province of Saskatchewan to make it to the House of Commons. It had been a bumpy ride (literally!): a last-minute nomination, a gruelling election campaign, a contested result. He’d survived one roller coaster, only to find that another lay ahead.
AFTER ANY FEDERAL ELECTION , roughly a third of our Members of Parliament arrive on the steps of Parliament’s Centre Block as rookies. They emerge victorious from an often-difficult nomination battle and general election campaign. They come from a wide variety of backgrounds, and bring with them a diverse set of experiences and motives, but unlike Merasty, they often arrive with little—if any—experience in elected office or in the context of national public
“You try and convince them that the role of an MP and MLA is important and it helps shape the future and their participation in the future,” he said. At community gatherings in school gyms, Merasty took questions from the audience. “Why should we worry about voting,” one man asked, “when we don’t have jobs?” Another said, “Who cares about voting—get us some more housing. Our houses are too crowded.” The gist of what Merasty heard was that voting is a waste of time.
“I agree—government has not been helpful,” Merasty responded. “You see the evidence of that when you see twenty people living in a three-bedroom house. And when the educational spending on a First Nations child is one-third less thanwhat it is elsewhere in the province.” But if the First Nations turned out to vote, Merasty said, they could elect one of their own to represent them. And if Merasty made it to Ottawa, then he’d work inside the system to try to fix those problems. “I don’t dispute the problems you’re mentioning,” Merasty said at Cumberland House. “But the power of your vote is loud.”
In reserve community centres, in school gyms, huddled into tiny kitchens, Merasty repeated his message. What he remembers most about that period is the darkness. It would start to get dark around four in the afternoon, and once he finished delivering his message it was back into the 4Runner for another long drive through the dark and the cold to the next reservation town, where he’d do it all again. He campaigned in places where no one had ever campaigned before—places the other candidates thought too small, places everyone else dismissed because the Indians didn’t vote anyway. During the eight-week campaign he and his wife and campaign manager put 30,000 kilometres on their SUV.
That last week Merasty reminded his supporters: Get out. Vote. Bring government-issued photo ID, and if you don’t have that, then bring three pieces of mail. The week before the election, it was minus 38 degrees Celsius, but luckily election day was positively balmy—the mercury actually topped zero. That evening, when the polls closed, Merasty was in Creighton, just down the road from Flin Flon, watching the television at RJ’s Motel. The numbers were close. Merasty led, he trailed, he led, and when the tally finally came in, he had won by 10,225 to 10,119, a margin of just 106 votes. The Conservative incumbent, Jeremy Harrison, challenged the result, alleging, among other things, that the Ahtahkakoop First Nation hadstaged a raffle for a television on election night, in a gambit designed to get out the vote. Another alleged irregularity involved a box of ballots that had somehow ended up being used as insulation for the grill of a pick-up truck. After a judge-ordered recount, Merasty held on to his victory, albeit with the margin narrowed to sixty-seven votes.
According to Merasty, the First Nations vote went up by 25 percent over previous elections. Merasty was the first full-status aboriginal person from the province of Saskatchewan to make it to the House of Commons. It had been a bumpy ride (literally!): a last-minute nomination, a gruelling election campaign, a contested result. He’d survived one roller coaster, only to find that another lay ahead.
AFTER ANY FEDERAL ELECTION , roughly a third of our Members of Parliament arrive on the steps of Parliament’s Centre Block as rookies. They emerge victorious from an often-difficult nomination battle and general election campaign. They come from a wide variety of backgrounds, and bring with them a diverse set of experiences and motives, but unlike Merasty, they often arrive with little—if any—experience in elected office or in the context of national public
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